With two photos, one Ohio family has made millions of hearts melt. The first image (above) of a mother, a father and their tiny treasures made its way to the Internet unexpectedly.
Mia, the sextuplets’ mother, says they became an Internet sensation by accident after she posted the photo on her Facebook page so her husband’s family could see it. “The next thing you know, everybody [was] tagging each other,” Mia told Oprah during OWN’s “Six Little McGhees Interview”. Now, the McGhee multiples are known all over the world.
After facing fertility issues, Rozonno and Mia tried to get pregnant for three years before turning to fertility treatments. Soon after, Mia became pregnant with twins.
But Mia went into pre-term labor and the unthinkable happened in the delivery room just after they were born. “They were kicking and moving and everything. But when they clipped the cord is when they died,” Mia says through tears. “I remember when it hit me. [I thought,] ‘My God, why did this happen to us?'”
Still grieving the loss of their twins, Rozonno and Mia tried again and got the shock of a lifetime—they had sextuplets!
Rozonno and Mia McGhee welcomed sextuplets in 2010. The family became known for a sweet photo featuring the newborn babies sprawled across their father’s back in front of their mother.
Six years later, they recreated the photo with the same photography studio. Since the kids have grown so much, the sextuplets weren’t all able to lounge across their dad like they did in the original photo. Instead, Rozonno Jr., Elijah, Olivia, Madison, Josiah and Issac sat in pairs near their parents while wearing brown tank tops and blue jeans.
Photographer Brian Killian, who took the original photo for the family with assistance from his wife, Janine Killian, told ABC News they used the same strategy for both photos. They photographed two kids at a time and used Photoshop to mash the pictures together for the final result.
